I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

I'd love any feedback, suggestions etc.

However, a month ago someone posted an almost identical concept to HN. I think it was for wedding registries though.

Overall, great concept, attractive website, and a real need.

My only criticism relates to it being fairly obvious. What hacker hasn't bought a wedding/baby gift and thought "Wouldn't it be cool if there was a registry for any store?" My point is, I'm sure this has been tried hundreds of times. So you have to ask yourself, "Why didn't those become mainstream, despite solving an obvious need?" and figure out how yours will execute differently. I really don't know the answer, but it has a lot to do with the ease of saying "I'm registered at Bed Bath & Beyond" (which everyone knows) over, "I'm registered with a new universal registry, which shows you what you can get at any online store, it's Babyli.st BABYLI.ST"

I'd really love to know your thoughts, because this same problem applies to a lot of different ideas where large brick & mortar stores still reign king, despite obvious inefficiencies.

Ideally, I want to be able to contribute $20 towards that $80 carseat. If A, B & C also contribute, the item should be sent as coming from me, A, B & C. If only myself and A contribute, you should be given the opportunity to put in your $40 to complete the purchase.

Just my 2 cents.

[Edit: Basically I would like the lovechild of a wishlist with something like http://www.chipin.com/ - do that and you can really differentiate yourself]

And second birthday ideas.

And third birthday ideas.

You get the idea.

Somebody already posted this on your suggestion forum, but I do like the idea of allowing people an option to offer item suggestions. Expand that idea by also allowing people to alternately "buy" something like a gift card (redeemable credit) for the moms; this would be helpful for the people out there who want to buy a gift, but who don't necessarily want to swoon over baby items. (e.g. Target gift card)

Congrats for the mom-to-be!

I think it's great. Color scheme and style are very appealing and appropriate. The one awkward point for me is the "plus any other online store" tag after the noteworthy logos. It seems a little too much like an add-on. Maybe something a little bigger (to draw attention to the fact that your service is universal), with text suggesting, "BabyList registry works with any online retailer!" and then have an "including:" or "featured" listing over your images?

Just my two cents.

When we had our first child, I couldn't find an online registry that I liked, so I scripted a rudimentary one up one night. It worked really well. My wife loved that she could register for intangibles like "Bring us dinner", or any gift from any store. When the baby was born, I took a lengthy paternity leave and, like you, thought I'd build a web app for others to use the registry. I actually took the idea to a local startup bootcamp and it was torn apart by the instructors/angels and left to die on the boardroom floor. Too hard to generate sufficient revenue. Here are a couple of tidbits from my experience for you:

1. One angel had invested in a universal registry and said it took them three years to find any revenue at all. What they did was pivot into a wedding registry that enabled guests to contribute to the couple's honeymoon fund. They made money on travel agent referrals to the couple.

2. This is a crowded market.

A lot of the comments in this thread (like mine!) note how great your site looks. When I showed my site to the bootcamp people, I emphasized my slick design. They essentially said, "No one gives a crap! What problem does it solve that isn't already solved by someone else!"

I thought, "But, but, but... everyone is like me right? Tech savvy and appreciative of good design and UX?"

Check out http://wishpot.com. They are a universal registry. All web 2.0 with social integration. They've got some funding (http://www.centernetworks.com/vc-funding-docstoc-wishpot-kaa...). Been around a few years now.

Here's a competitor: http://www.findgift.com/Services/Gift-Registry/. It was founded in 1997 by a couple from Georgia.

And another: http://myregistry.com. Second spot on Google for "gift registry".

Now check it out:

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/findgift.com+wishpot.com+my...

Good luck!

1. How to mark items as purchased. Relying on gift givers to "reserve" and "unreserve" items may be a step up from restaurant reservations but that's not saying much. I wouldn't be surprised if your honor system led to close to half of every registry ending up in a black hole of forgotten reservations.

2. How to keep up with out-of-stock items and price changes. Baby registries usually span months, so how do you deal with outdated information or dead links? From my own Amazon baby registry experience, about 30% of my wish list went MIA by the time of the actual baby shower, when most of my friends and family made their purchases.

3. How do you deal with bad UIs. Drawing again from my Amazon experience, a lot of older relatives almost bought the wrong item because of all the "you might also like" items all over the screen. I wouldn't be surprised if a large chunk of your purchases got diverted by bad 3rd party UIs.

4. Varied URL standards. For example, some shopping sites get product options from user session so non-logged in URLs link to an item's default color and size. So once you are off to a 3rd party website, there is no guarantee the gift giver would buy the correct item.

As far as I can see you've built a wish list that you are marketing as a registry and I am not sure if that's a good thing. The key feature of a registry is that a retailer makes sure that the correct items get purchased (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_registry) so I think there is a broken promise there.

In terms of suggestions, I'd suggest you tweak your index page a bit. When I landed there, I was most interested in seeing what one of these registries looked like. I assumed that clicking the image of John and Jane's Baby List would show me an example, but it's not currently linked. To actually find an example, you have to think a bit and either find the text link under your Create button or realize that the Showcase link is what you're looking for.

Also, the Vendors page needs a bit of work. I'm sure that's number 7273 on your priority list, but I don't think it'll be very successful in engaging vendors as is.

On a personal note, if this does start to have success, I hope you've got plans in place for someone else to carry the workload once your baby arrives. I'd be putting those plans in place now so someone else is largely running things as you enter the final weeks. It's a cliche to say 'your life will change' - but it will change so much it would be a shame to have a new project die because you can't devote time to it in the first couple of months of your other more important project.

If I look at the example registry and goto purchased items, there is 1 purchased at "etsy.com". If expand "View By Store" and uncheck "etsy", the item disappears as intended. However, if I uncheck "Amazon" and then recheck "Amazon", new items show up that weren't originally there. I'm assuming they're from the "All Items" list even though I'm still under "Purchased".

As others have said, I'm not in your target market, but I think the site is very well down.

I think the bookmarklet is a bit high threshold for some (if not most) users. Telling them to copy+paste a website URL and enter it into a field on their control panel is not.

For SEO your site could use a little work. Perhaps a blog about pregnancy could help get your domain ranking for some niche related terms. You are probably aiming for social sharing here, and organic search might be a lesser priority. Make sharing on Facebook and Twitter a lot easier (API helps) and visible (icons help). I might not sign up, but still like or recommend your app.

Also adding just that extra page to convince users to sign up, or a even demo video, can help with user engagement.

Finally I'd have a small look at making your site canonical, by rewrite or specifying canonical: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-y... because /about and /about/ return the same content. And to quote W3C "Always declare the encoding of your document" (declare a meta charset like ISO or UTF-8 in your header http://code.google.com/p/doctype/wiki/ArticleUtf7).

If the system does not support it already, something worth considering is a function allowing the person making the list to upload a photo of themselves to be displayed on their wish list page.

This will re-assure the "buyers" they are on the correct page, not just some random list of products on the internet :)

I can see how it would be done with exact matches, but a lot of stores don't carry the exact same items, in order to remove price competition. The items may look and function the same, and be under the same brand, but they will be distinct models.

If I list a 4 slot, extra-wide, chrome toaster on a registry under one model number from Target, how could I know if I should buy a toaster matching that description at WalMart without scanning the list of purchased items? The model of one store offers the convenience of being absolutely sure there aren't any duplicate purchases since once an item is purchase, it is removed.

I just realized a toaster is a bad example for a baby registry, but you get my point.

As mentioned a few times here, the bookmarklet is a big barrier to entry. I think a walkthrough video would help that substantially. I can't imagine a regular person understanding they can just browse around the web shopping and your site can pick it up. Browser plugins are also a big entry barrier to people who aren't very savvy.

I wonder if you linked out to sites like amazon in a frame where you persisted a top bar around those sites as the user browsed. Might be janky though. *edit: just noticed amazon throws a JS error when framed. damnit.

Another thought is perhaps you cobble some api+scraping stuff together and provide the user a simple search+add to registry function inside your site.

So is your business model based on affiliate programs for all those retailers? How are you tracking whether or not something was purchased?

Feature request :- * Would love more info about the item in line. * Who is buying what (if it is socially acceptable!) as I might team up with a friend but not with a stranger. * Baby journals et. al.

Other helpful info for you:- * Did you knew about http://www.thebump.com ? * Thebump has reading info + baby name help + videos + registry.

A question to you:- Now that you know about a site which has already solved same problem as you, would you still pursue this idea? If yes then what will be the thought process?

With every idea I start hacking with I tend to over research and find a solution and then steam goes off! I want other people's experience with this phenomenon who tend to overcome this.

Blogher would be a great source for you to find testers and get solid feedback from a group of mommies and mommies to be :). Also, one thing that I liked about Amazon and Babies R US however, is they had list recommendations. It may be a good idea for you to add some cool lists to you site such as "Top 10 Must Haves for Green Moms" or somethng like that. I was clueless when registering and appreciated the guidance of the lists.

I'll be sure to promote it here in Tokyo to the American moms! Good luck with your pregnancy!

I’m definitely not in the audience for this site, so maybe all parents-to-be learn what a baby registry is from their friends or something, but it would be nice if you explained to random internet surfers what the site is for. Just a sentence would suffice.

"We" would sound more professional.. Just to be clear, I'm not saying you should remove that friendly tone which I find great, especially for that kind of website. However, I'm not sure if it is worth it to put so much emphasis on you as you are not the goal of the website..

We were looking for "bleh". Thanks to xyz designer who join our team and help us create this [etc.].

My 5 cents, good luck :)

(I know it's kind of ironic that I suggest being more professional when I can hardly speak English correctly, but anyway..)

My experience was that it doesn't work out very well, but your thing is definitely more polished than mine, and maybe with the right promotion you can make it click. :)

If I put babyli.st on my shower invite, I imagine having some extremely confused Aunts and Grandmothers... but if I can say "Babyli.st, Target and Babies R Us" that would be more generation friendly. They can go to Target, and it updates on Babyli.st for my savvy friends.

And buy yourself some kid-o-potamus swaddles. We never would have picked that out but someone gave us one and that was a life saver the first 6 weeks or so. Never would have though being all straight jacketed was the preferred way for babies to sleep...

On the marketing front, one way to pitch it is that a decentralized registry makes life easier for your friends, too. I am so sick of having to pay top dollar for gifts just to get them off of a registry, when better deals can be had elsewhere for the same products. How many extra dollars have gone to Bed, Bath & Beyond instead of Amazon simply for that reason?

On the privacy policy, the principles you state are excellent. It would also help to be a little more concrete, for example under what circumstances (if any) will you share information with partners and advertisers?

I love the idea of creating connections between vendors. Is there anything more community-oriented than a mailing list? A LinkedIn or Facebook group for example if most of the vendors hang out one place or another.

1) Try to collect data and offer up suggestions 2) Try to get a good Facebook presence. (etsy.com). Your target market lives on Facebook now. 3) Can you email your registry?

Gotta go. Good luck

If I'm buying a gift for a friend, do I need to know their mailing address in order to have it shipped to them? It would be amazing if this took care of that for me.

It just seems to be more difficult than necessary to verbally communicate how to reach the site.

How stable are the product links you use? Do you do any type of periodic validation?

If I click on a link to view a product, it might be nice to open that window inside a frame (or modern equivalent) with a babyli.st "reserve" button at the top.

As far as usability goes, the home page is very easy to understand, and you'll definitely get a high conversion rate because of this.

But it's inconsistent; I can edit other items.

You need to get those stores on board in some way as well... big risk if they decide that you aren't "needed".

Well done!

Congrats on your forthcoming arrival!

One quick note would be that the logo is linking to babyli.st/index when it could really just link to babyli.st. That way I don't have to click the Back button twice. :)

Similar idea, but with the variant of your own domain and the ability to announce to friends etc, when your baby is born.

2. Your domain name sucks. Look for something better. This is impossible to recall.